One Tequila, Two Tequila
by Lotos-Eater
Summary: Five limes, two shotglasses, and a bottle of you know what. Add a couple of competitive bounty hunters and you get one unforgettable night in TJ. FayeSpike. Complete.
1. One Tequila, Two Tequila

Blah blah blah disclaimer whatever.

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**One Tequila, Two Tequila**

--

He sat on the couch. She sat on the chair facing him. Above them was the ceiling fan, and in between them was the table.

Their eyes met.

"You can still back out, you know," he said.

"You're just saying that because you know you'll lose," she answered him, unblinking. Her gaze was cold and steady.

"I'm just trying to be nice. I do weigh a lot more than you."

"Looks can be deceiving."

"You're already half drunk."

"You're more than half drunk."

He opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself. How drunk was he, anyway? Oh well. The urge to conquer blanked out all other thoughts.

The Bebop was calm, being landed on the outskirts of TJ, and it was only early evening, though still bright. The sun stayed out late in TJ. Jet and Ed were nowhere to be found. It was only him and Faye in the living room, the whirling ceiling fan, the contents of the table in between them, and the electrically charged air.

"Fine," he said. "Enough talk. Let's do this."

"Fine."

His hand moved toward the table. On his right-hand side was a green glass bottle of premium tequila, gold label, top of the line. There may or may not have been a long squirmy thing at the bottom of it – he hadn't looked when he bought it and he sure as hell wouldn't look now. On his left-hand side there was a paper bag full of limes. And straight in front of him were a pair of shotglasses.

He unscrewed the bottle and flicked the cap across the room, and then he set the bottle back down. "Ladies first."

"Both at once," she said with a smirk. "That's the only proper way."

He shrugged casually. "Doesn't matter to me."

She reached into the paper bag and pulled out a lime. With a knife from her boot she sliced it up and pushed the slices aside, and then she carefully poured out the tequila into the two shotglasses and set the bottle aside also. She pulled one of the glasses toward her and their eyes met again.

His hand closed over the other glass.

It was all coming back to him now in the moment of clarity before the plunge, sort of like a calm before the storm. They had lost the bounty. Jet had disappeared in a huff, saying he was sick of watching them screw up and tired of their bickering, and after splitting up, just as angry with each other, Spike and Faye had just happened to end up at the same bar. A coincidence. By that time they'd each had a drink, and after the long fruitless chase they were too tired to argue very hard, but Spike took great offense when she suggested that she could drink him under the table, and she likewise got really pissed when he laughed at her. A quick visit to the liquor store and a short walk back to the Bebop had led them to where they were now. And come hell or high water he was determined to win.

"Last chance," he said.

"What a pathetic way to beg for mercy," she taunted. "You're not afraid of a little girl like me, are you, Spike?" she asked, pouting fakely.

"Very well," he replied, his voice cool as steel. He would see her pass out. He would.

They grabbed the glasses in tandem and tossed them back. Spike, trying to show off his control over motor skills, refilled the glasses almost instantly after they'd dessicated a couple slices of lime.

Faye was completely unshaken. "I hope you're not tired," she said, "'cause it's going to be a long night."

--

Their glasses clinked down on the table again. How many had it been now? They had traded barbs so hotly at first that he had completely lost count of the shots. Let's see now, it had to be more than five… less than twenty… well, surely… he shook his head. The room had started to get blurry on him, and he had a bad feeling that whatever came after this, before he went completely unconscious, he was not going to remember much of it later.

Faye was looking little worse for wear. Her cheeks were pleasantly rosy, her eyes wide and dark, and her smile was starting to get on his nerves. Since they had started this, it had gone from mocking to sultry to… he didn't know how to describe it now, but he didn't like it. That little red smile made him nervous.

"How old were you when you lost your virginity?" she asked. He could tell she was fighting not to let her words slur.

"Seventeen. How old were you?"

She smirked. "I don't remember," she said innocently.

It was hard to say when the game had started down this route, but it was in full swing now and each of them was trying to outdo the other.

"Your turn," she said, pouring them both another round.

Glasses up, heads back. Lime slices. Glasses down.

"Have you ever actually been in love?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

When he realized she wasn't going to elaborate, he said, "That's it?"

"That's all you asked," she said with a grin. That grin. "I don't need to ask you, of course," she added dismissively.

They breathed for a moment. Spike was too drunk to get angry and he never let her see him off balance anyway. Not even for things like that.

Time for another. They were businesslike about it, each one trying not to let the other one see the effort that it took to act half sober. The glasses clinked down on the table again.

"What are you really afraid of?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said without thinking, because it was becoming the case that he said everything without thinking. He reflected dully that what he said was true. He wasn't afraid of death at all. "What are you afraid of?" he asked.

"Getting pregnant," she said.

He was too drunk to stop himself from laughing. It was the kind of laughter that you get at a certain stage of drunkenness when everything from the weather to the woman across from you to verbs was insanely funny, and you laughed so hard that you could hardly breathe. But she was laughing too. After a few minutes of that, he couldn't even remember what they were laughing about, but every time their eyes met they started laughing again. Shaking as he grabbed for self-control, he poured two more glasses.

They drank. They stared. Now they were serious again. "What was it that happened between you and Vicious?" she asked.

"Julia," he said simply, before he could stop himself.

She nodded, eyes unfocused. Why had he said that, he wondered? He felt very strange. He had been drunk before, but never drunk like this. It was the tequila. It had to be the tequila. Every sober moment is alike, he thought, but every drunk moment is drunk in its own special way…

"That's not fair," he said back to her. "I can't ask you the same thing."

"Then ask me something else."

"Fine. Why do you dress like you do?"

It was just a stupid question. He hadn't thought much about it, it had just jumped into his mind. But her face seemed to fall and go oddly sober for a moment. What did it mean? Did he care?

"Because, why not?" she said. "Gives me the upper hand, doesn't it? It's a diversion."

"Yeah, but don't you worry?" he asked, suddenly curious.

"About what? Getting raped?" The discomfort that either of them might have felt about it was lost in a casual, drunken ease. Modesty had disappeared several shots ago.

"Well, sure," he said. "It's a rough world."

She shrugged, filling the glasses again with a wobbly hand. "It doesn't matter what you wear," she said, taking her tequila without even waiting for him. He watched the movement of her throat as she gulped it down and noted the way she wiped her little red mouth with the back of her hand. "It doesn't matter," she went on. "If they're after you, you get caught in jeans and a sweatshirt easy as you can get caught like this. They want and they take. That's the rule. If you're weak like I was the only thing you've got is distraction. That's your… you know… whatchacallit… wall. Armor. Defense. That's all you can do."

She didn't make any sense to him. He watched her. Her eyes were unfocused. He had a feeling that this all meant something, but he also had a deep feeling that he didn't want to know about it. Blearily he downed the shot she had poured for him.

"Spike," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Let's go shoot some pool."

She was off the couch in a moment, and she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him up before he could even think to protest.

--

And now they were wandering through TJ. Somewhere behind them there had been a pool hall where they had been drinking liquor or beer or something (certainly not shooting pool – by the time they got there, they'd forgotten why they left the Bebop), plus lots of leering guys, but they had gotten out of there. How they had done so was lost in Spike's drunken haze. All he could focus on anymore were the blurry streets of TJ. People were trying to sell him things. Kids and other street types lined up their wares on the dark sidewalks of TJ – cheap jewelry, cheap homemade rugs, cheap porn, junk like that – kids hawking anything they could to the tourists and other passersby. Sober, you might bargain with them. Drunk, it was better to run in the other direction.

The hours had passed in a blur of lights, music, crowds, drinks. Somewhere in there they had gone into another bar and run out of money. He vaguely remembered Faye gyrating on the countertop and getting tips from other drunk men to buy the two of them another round, and he vaguely remembered being fascinated by the muscles of her abdomen, especially when they had landed in his lap. Some guy had offered her money for the night. "Talk to him," she'd said, pointing at Spike.

"I'm not your pimp!" he had cried.

"I'll give you two million for her," someone had said.

"I said I'm not her… wait, how much?"

He couldn't remember how they'd gotten out of there.

Now they were walking – well, swerving – through the narrow, crowd-plagued streets of old-town TJ's night scene. A couple languid street musicians were around, getting lousy tips. He could hardly remember how they had gotten where they were, let alone how to get back to the Bebop. Every once in a while, when he was lucky, he was able to put together a coherent thought. "I hope Jet doesn't see us," he said.

"Jet," she said.

"He's asleep. Gotta be asleep."

"Jet," she said again, her voice lower.

He paused, mentally, although his legs were still freewheeling forward. "You have the hots for Jet?"

"Mmm… he's muscley," she said with that grin. "That's the way I like 'em."

He bristled. "You're nuts," he said. He didn't know why it bothered him.

"I like you too!" she cried, immediately sensing his offense. There were no illusions when you were this drunk, no modesty at all. "I like you just fine. Physically."

"You're nuts," he repeated, feeling better for some reason. "Crazy dumb woman… You're so drunk."

"Yeah, but you're soooo drunk."

"You're drunker."

"Nope. Nosir. I win. You're drunkerer."

He was going to say in your dreams, but at that moment a lamp post came at him out of nowhere, shoved into him, and ran in the other direction. He spun around. "Did you see that asshole? Where'd he go? I'm gonna kill him!" His arms flexed, ready to fight.

She was laughing for some reason.

He glowered. She grabbed his arm – she looped her skinny arm around his elbow and pulled at him, leaning, trying to stay upright – and they walked onward, and often sidewards, and further onward. Globs of people passed them, some staring, some laughing. They didn't care. At some point there was a man on the corner with a hat out in front of him. Another street musician. He had an accordion, and he was playing some dumb little tune while people around him watched and laughed. They would have just passed him by, but Faye stopped. "I know that song!" she cried. Her voice was piercingly loud..

Someone in the crowd – his hair was gray – turned to her. "You like polka?"

Spike wasn't too good at counting at that moment, but he figured there were fewer teeth in the man's mouth than fingers on his hand.

"That song! I know it from somewhere! It has words!" she cried, drunkenly ecstatic. She stopped and stared, transfixed on the image of the accordion player. "What were the words? What were they?" she shouted to herself.

"You like polka? You know how to dance?" the man asked.

Spike didn't even know what had happened, but suddenly in the middle of the crowd this old gray-haired guy was swinging Faye around like a doll, and she had her head thrown back. She was laughing. He was laughing. Everyone was laughing. Why were they laughing? He couldn't remember. Faye was smiling like a baby.

He had a moment of lucidity watching her trip over her own two feet while strangers laughed – and he thought, this is the happiest I've been since I can remember. This is the drunkest I've been since I can remember.

As they walked away, she was talking, maybe only to herself, maybe to another lamppost. "I knew that song. I heard it before. Sometimes I know, I know things, you know? I know. I see or hear and I know. Oh, like… like… like déjà vu. Or a name. I remember names sometimes. Sometimes things. You know how you remember things? I… you know the lion fountain? I remember it. I remember being so sad. Why was I sad? Why… where are we, Spike?" Then she giggled.

He looked around him. There was something familiar about it, that was for sure. It was a very disreputable part of town. The kind of place where you could get mugged. Where only thugs and dealers hung out. Where no one called home unless they were so stuck in their addiction that they couldn't crawl away. The kind of place you wouldn't be caught dead in this time of night.

Only… wait… he concentrated… wait, they weren't dead.

But the streets were so pretty with their lights. Tonight… the city was beautiful. Its lights flickered merrily in his vision. They _fliskered_. That wasn't a word, he reminded himself, but that's what the lights were doing. They were fliskering.

"Spike Spike Spike. Why was it so sad? Spike… that's a weird name, Shpike. Spikety. Spikle. El Spiko. Shpike. Wheredjou gedda name like that?"

And when TJ is beautiful, he thought… that's when you know you're drunk. You are drunkety-drunk-drunk.

Faye, whose thin white arm was now snaked around his waist inside his jacket, was struggling to remember something. "How does it go now… don't stop me… don't tell me, I almost had it… wait… liquor… liquor for beer. No. Li-quor be-fore beer. That's it."

His mind swiveled around to that direction. "No. Beer before liquor."

"Never thicker."

"No, it was something else," he said. "Um… beer before liquor…"

"Sicker!" she shouted, straightening up abruptly and jerking him backwards so that he lost his balanced and careened into her slightly. She tottered unsteadily when his weight hit her and her breasts jostled, but she was momentarily distracted and didn't seem to notice. "Beer before liquor, never sicker!" she said with a relish. "Liquor before beer, never fear!"

"Oh yeah," he said vaguely, staring at the breasts. "Yeah."

"But… Spike?"

"Hmm?"

"Um… which did we have first?"

His brow creased in concentration. He was trying to focus on what she had asked, but other words kept drifting in and out of his mind. Words like _breasts_.

She looked around her. The world was spinning quite a lot. It was fun. She remembered the polka music. Polka! Ha ha! That was a funny word! She began to sing the words she hadn't remembered before, although the rhythm only came together in her head. Her voice began on a high note. "Oooooh I don't want her you can have her she's too fat for me – hey! She's too fat for me – hey! She's too much for me…"

They were in the darkest part of town. Only the crazies here, he thought. Only the worst of the worst. The darkest of the dark. His muscles flexed. Only the lowest of the low. He would show them.

They rounded a corner, and there it was in front of them.

"Wow," Faye said. She wobbled unsteadily, pushing him around where he stood. His arm was over her shoulder.

"Yeah," Spike responded. They were now leaning against each other in order to stay upright. Faye's hand crawled up to his shoulder, still underneath his jacket. He felt his own hand on her back. For a moment he was conscious of how small her waist was, how fragile she seemed. How warm her bare skin. How long since he'd gotten any.

"Wow," Faye repeated, staring at the thing. "I guess… it figures. Worst part of town."

"That's where it belongs," he said.

In front of them, the awkward, cumbersome mass of the Bebop reared its ugly head.

"Do you knooooooow," Faye continued musically, "We're probably the scariest ones out here?"

--

Now they were on the couch. They hadn't poured any more tequila since they'd gotten in, but Faye was looking at the bottle in a manner that Spike distrusted. At least he would have distrusted it if he had been able to think at all beyond things like registering colors.

"This is good as it'll ever be," Spike said wearily. He didn't know what he was saying. They weren't really even listening to each other anymore, they were just sitting on the couch. He was sitting, anyway. Faye was lying across the cushions and struggling with her shoes. Spike had already shrugged off his jacket.

"It's too hot for boots," she said. "Let's take all our clothes off."

"You first."

"Hey," she said, struggling to pry the heel of one boot off of her foot, "were you really gonna sell me?"

"Hmm?"

"You know? Two million?"

"Sometimes I like this place," Spike said in a daze. "I thought it was just a place to stay. I don't know. I don't know."

"I love it," Faye said decidedly. "Take off my shoe."

The truth is that they were beyond the point of listening to one another. Each was now just carrying on a conversation with themself.

"You don't wanna love it, but there you are," Spike murmurred.

"And stocking. So damn hot. Clingy."

"Damn thing. Under your skin."

"Why did I buy pink? I hate pink."

"Where's the Jet when you need him," Spike said. "I'm too think to drunk."

"Hey! I'm drunk!" Faye, her words thick and slow in her mouth. "Hey – hey Spike! We got something in common!" She pried off the second shoe and sent it flying across the room. Her stocking followed, but her aim was off – it landed on Spike's head. She was lying down, her neck draped over the arm of the sofa.

He drew the stocking off of his face, wondering what it was. He leaned back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling fan, whose whirling blades held a mesmerizing appeal as never before. He felt something in his lap. He picked it up and gave it a pat, idly assuming that it was Ein.

"I think we're all done with it," he said. "Done with life. And this… this is where we go." He closed his eyes and almost went to sleep, but then he remembered what he was going to say. "It's that place you go when you die… the place… you know, whatsitsface…"

"Heaven?" she suggested.

"Limbo." He closed his eyes again.

"Hey," she said. Her head flopped lazily to the other shoulder. "Hey, that's mine."

"Huh?"

"That leg. That's my leg."

He looked at his lap. He was petting her calf.

If he had been sober he would have flung it away in disgust, or at least made some disparaging comment. But Spike was very, very far from sober. Sober was a different country from where he was. Sober was a far off moon.

"It's… it's not a bad leg," he said, staring at the smooth pale skin.

"Yes. It's very nice. It's mine. Give it back," she said. Still, she made no move to take it away from him.

His other hand fell on it. The contours felt nice, and he could feel the muscle tone. So this was Faye's leg. He'd wanted to meet it for so long. They had so much to share.

"Hey," she said. "Wait… um… wait…"

"What?"

Her brow creased like a kid trying to figure out long division. "I just had it… no… no, never mind. Go on." She flopped back, her neck back on the armrest.

His fingers traced patterns on the leg idly. They crept around. They went up to where the flesh was thicker. That was when he notice that she was undoing those straps that kept her shorts up. "It's too hot for suspenders," she whined. She was trying to take them off, but she was inhibited by her top.

She wriggled. Something in Spike really woke up when she wriggled.

His first thought was unspeakable. His next thought was, _you're so drunk_. The thought after that went_, she's so drunk. This is wrong. _After that came the sort of thoughts that went like this: _breasts._

That was the last scrap of sobriety talking. He wasn't listening; his eyes were fixated on the button that kept the front of her top together. Her drunken fingers were struggling to set it free. He couldn't believe the animated movement of her cleavage and had to keep staring at it to make sure that it was real.

But she gave up – or chickened out, it was hard to say which. She gave up on the button and sat up and reached over to the table suddenly, grabbing the neck of the bottle that had formerly held a great quantity of tequila. It seemed to be empty. Funny, he thought – his memory was a complete fog, but he remembered the tequila. He knew they hadn't finished it. He thought they'd come home because they remembered that there was tequila left.

Anyway, there was still plenty of leg to play with.

But Faye seemed distracted. Her eyes shot open. Due to her state of drunkenness this took half a minute, but by the time she was done she was almost alert. "Er… Spike?"

"What?"

It took all of her current mental ability to sort through the nouns and verbs in her head and put together a sentence: "Who ate the worm?"

He blinked for a minute, processing the request. "_I_ didn't," he said finally.

"_I_ didn't either!"

Their eyes met for a moment, and then, slowly, their heads turned. Their heads turned toward the unnoticed corner of the room, where someone was slouched by the wall. Their heads turned toward Ed.

The redhead grinned at them. "Edward feels funnnnnny!"

They looked at each other. Then they looked back at Ed. Then they looked at each other. Then they looked back at Ed. Then they looked at each other.

Then they looked… "Whereshe go?" Spike slurred.

Faye wrenched herself off the sofa, stood up with one leg and then stood up with the other leg, but it seemed like she couldn't keep both of them straight at once. "Shit!"

"Shit!" Spike echoed. He was half freaked out, half grieving over the loss of Faye's leg in his lap.

Faye struggled to gather her thoughts. "This… wait, I just thought… wait. Hold on. Yeah, that's right." She summoned her breath for the grand conclusion. "This… this is bad."

"Shit!" Spike said, hands in his thick green hair, which was already damp with drunken sweat.

"She's… um… eight?"

He blinked at her. "Twelve?"

"Ten?"

"More than ten?"

"Wait… what were we talking about?"

He grimaced. "Um… something about numbers… no. A kid. She's a kid."

"Who, Ed?"

"No, Jet! Of course Ed! She's a kid and she ate … thingy…"

"What about Jet?" she asked, confused.

"Worm!" he shouted.

She stared at the floor for a minute. "Wait… shit! Who left the boddle out!"

"What?"

"It wasn't me! I didn't leave the boddle out! How much was left? Who… wait… what were we talking about?"

"You already said that," he said.

"Yes. Yes I did. So what were we talking about?"

For a few minutes they just stared at each other in dumb silence, and then a light somehow went on in the drunken haze of Spike's head. "Ed is drunk!" he said.

Faye's eyes lit up. "Wow! So am I!" She fell back on the sofa and laughed.

Suddenly, with the scream of shrieking metal, the ship lurched into motion.

--

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Author's Note.

Hold on to your pants, people – this will of course be continued.

-Waltraute


	2. Three Tequila, Floor

--

**Three Tequila, Floor**

--

They rolled into a heap at the far wall. "Jet!" Faye screamed, her mouth stalling on the first consonant. "Jet! Where is he? We have to get Jet!"

"What's he got that I don't?" Spike demanded unreasonably.

"Sobriety!" she shrieked. The lights of the common room fliskered as Ed wrenched the ship straight upwards.

"Shit!" Spike said again.

"Shit! What do we do?"

"We have to stop her! She's drunk and flying the ship…"

"How? How can she fly it? Jet has… you know… that thing… so people can't steal it…"

"Keys," Spike finished for her. He was frustrated. He couldn't seem to concentrate on anything, and whereas this had made things fun before it wasn't doing much for him now. They both struggled to their feet together. The ship lurched back and forth. He wondered what the altitude was… whatever it was, it sure was growing fast. He could feel the accelerating drag of gravity on his body, and he knew that this wasn't just an affect of tequila.

He could _feel _his brain trying to work, but the neurons or relays or whatever the hell it was that normally made him function were currently out to lunch.

"She's hacking in," Faye said. "Where is she? Where's Tomato? We have to stop her. Shit. We have to stop her. Ouch!"

"Sorry," he said. He'd just slammed her into the wall as the ship jerked to the side. He heard glass break. Alarms were going off. Lights were blinking. Momentum was all over the place, and it wasn't just in their heads anymore.

"Where's Tomato?" Faye asked.

"Don't know… don't… wait…"

Faye broke away from him and strode off. "Ed!" she shouted. "Ed! We've got a treat for you," she said in a singsong voice. "Something nummy!"

"Treat for Ed?"

"Yes! A great treat!" Faye told her.

"Like the green bottle-bottle?" Ed said deliriously.

"Ed?" Spike said. "Ed… there's more back on the ground. Ed… there's good stuff back there… Ed… come on, Ed, just take us down. Slowly," he added.

"Shit! Why'd we get so drunk!" Faye shouted, clinging onto the doorway for her life. He grabbed onto her arm for support.

"It was your idea!"

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

"Was… what were we talking about?"

The ship lurched again. "We're going to die," Spike said with a smile. It was true – he wasn't afraid.

"There!" Faye cried, pointing at the stairs. Spike looked. Ed was lying across the stairs backward, bracing herself against the railings with her legs, her mouth open with silent laughter (this was, he thought, the best joke ever in her book even when she was sober), and in her hands she had what looked like agame controller.

He let go of Faye. It was no use trying to stand. The lurching ship and the fact that he was so drunk it would have felt like the ship was lurching anyway – these were two big counts against walking. He crawled – or at times because of the angle the ship was flying, he climbed – across the floor towards the stairs.

"Edward's got your Bebop, ooh la la…"

"Yes Ed. Good for you. Give me that thing," he said, pulling himself up the first few stairs.

"Wanna do the loop-de-loop?"

"No!"

He was close enough to grab onto her arm. Ed cried out in surprise when he tried to wrench the controller away. "Mine! Get your own!"

"C'mere you little… crazy… drunk…"

"Ed wants to PLAY!"

They struggled. Gravity kept changing direction. She bit him but he didn't even notice until a second later – that was one advantage of being drunk while you wrestled with Ed. Finally he knocked the controller out of her hand – he heard it break against something – and grabbed onto the railing, bracing them both while the ship reeled and closing his eyes tightly.

The ship dropped so fast that their bodies hovered in the air for almost ten seconds, but then – suddenly – the rate of descent evened out. The ship steadied. For Spike the room kept spinning, but at least his body was staying in more or less the right place.

Faye stumbled back into the room a few minutes later. "Auto-pilot," she mumbled, grabbing onto the wall. "Landing sequence engaged. Pleash remain seeded nntil yership cmstoo full stop."

Time passed – and they jarred to a halt.

Spike got up and walked down the stairs.

"Edward!" Faye shouted.

Ed appeared from behind him and he stopped in his tracks to watch her as she searched for the pieces of her controller. She couldn't walk straight. She didn't usually walk straight and Spike in his drunken state was not a very good judge of _straight, _but Ed was definitely not focusing on the direction her feet were taking her. He felt the overwhelming pressure of a foreign feeling: guilt.

"What's that nasty-gross stuff? Ed tried it. Ed didn't like it. Ed tried some more."

"You idiot!" Spike shouted at her. "You shouldn't have touched that stuff!"

"It made Spike and Faye-Faye so happy!" she protested. "Ed wanted to be happy too!"

"That's my girl," said Faye, wiping her forehead and collapsing onto the couch.

Spike thought about trying to put together a lecture, but his mind was very muddled, and anyway they weren't about to die anymore. Landing had been achieved.

--

"Attagirl," Faye said out of her drunken haze. She was supporting Ed with one hand, patting her back with the other. Ed was losing her lunch over the side of the Bebop's runway onto the desert floor below. They were parked at a tilt, but as the ship was at a full halt and not going anywhere, neither Faye nor Spike was complaining, and Ed seemed to be preoccupied.

"Oooh," Ed said between dry-heaves, "That stuff was bad."

"Yes. Very bad. Very very very bad stuff," Faye agreed. She still wasn't even close to sober, and she was starting to feel a little bit queasy too. But she was relieved that the kid was getting it out of her system. Her brain was waking up enough to know that a vast amount of tequila inside a thirteen-year-old was bad for a lot of reasons, and it was good to know that Ed was fully conscious.

Finally Ed's stomach seemed to quit. Faye got her a glass of water. Ed gargled it musically. By now Ed was by far the most sober out of the three of them. "Ed, where did Jet go?" Faye asked.

"Jet-person went bye-bye. Said he needed to walk," Ed said.

"I wonder if he'll find his way home," Faye muttered. "It's not where he left it."

Faye was struggling for sobriety. She had never wanted to be sober so much in her life. What if they had crashed? What if they had burnt up in the atmosphere? What if they had lost control and went careening through space until the ends of time? These were sobering thoughts for her conscious mind, if not her bloodstream. And Ed was just about turning inside out. No one, Faye reflected, ever forgot their first experience with tequila. No one.

Well, of course there was a lot you _forgot, _but the general feeling afterward sure stayed with you.

For a while she just sat with Ed by the edge of the Bebop's platform, still dizzy. Ed fell asleep so fast she actually fell backward, but at least it was a natural sleep. She snored loudly. Faye watched her sleep for a minute, drunkenly fascinated by the even unmarkedness of the young girl's skin. Had she ever been so young herself? Her mind was wandering...

Eventually Spike came out with a blanket. He didn't say anything, just wrapped it around Ed, picked her up (with an unsteady sidestep) and brought her back inside. He came close to dropping her and ramming her head into the wall a few times, but he made it eventually. Faye followed him. He laid the kid on the sofa, where she stretched out and snored loudly some more.

"I think she got it all out of her," Faye said. She could tell her words were still slurred. The drink hadn't worn off yet. Maybe it never would. Maybe she'd be drunk for the rest of her life.

I almost _was _drunk for the rest of my life, she thought.

They put away the glasses and the extra limes, and they threw the bottle from the deck of the Bebop out into the empty desert night. _Still_ it wasn't wearing off. Whatever that stuff was, it was worth the money. But the drunkenness was stale now, no longer exciting.

All of a sudden she felt so sleepy. Sleep was the answer. If she could just settle back here… okay, she was on the deck of the ship and outside, but even so… good a place as any… just shut her eyes…

She blinked them open again when something touched her thigh. It was Spike's shoe. She looked up at him from the spot on the deck where she had curled up and he looked down at her.

"That was close," he said.

"Yeah."

"We probably shouldn't do that again."

"What – get drunk, or get Ed drunk?"

"I don't know. You still drunk?"

"Yes. Very," she said.Why even bother to lie?

"Me too."

"Go sleep it off, then," she said.

"You first."

"I'm trying," she mumbled blearily, closing her eyes to him and rolling over. The metal floor didn't have a lot of give, but it was nice and cool and at least when she closed her eyes it stayed in one place. If only she didn't have to think anymore.

Suddenly she felt his breath on her stomach, and two long arms crept underneath her body. "Whaddaryoudoing," she muttered half-heartedly.

"Your turn," he said, staggering to his feet unevenly.

She felt the floor fall away from her by degrees. Faye woke up a bit more when he came close to dropping her. "Hey," she protested. "Hey! I'm close enough to losing my lunch as it is!" Still, she made no motion to get away from him. "Put me down, Spike."

He didn't speak. He was too busy concentrating on staying upright and keeping his hold on the scrawny woman in his arms. One arm looped under her white thighs, their muscles now lax with exhaustion, and the other arm ran under her back. He grasped his hands together in front of her to make sure his grip didn't slip. He wasn't sure what had put the idea in his head, but now that he had started it he was going to carry it through. He noticed when she leaned her head against his chest after a minute and closed her eyes, and one of her hands crept up to the top of his shoulder and rested there. For some reason it pleased him.

He staggered unevenly into the ship, made his way to her room, kicked her door open, stumbled in and deposited her on her bunk. She made a sound and grabbed for her pillow, snuggling into it with a smile. He watched her for a moment before he actually lost his balance and fell on top of her.

"Whaddaryou up to now?" she slurred blearily.

"Fell," he managed to say with effort. His torso was lying on top of her pelvis. He dragged himself over her and after a minute he had managed to find a comfortable position lying next to her, and by that point he had decided that it was time to stop moving once and for all. Except that it was too hot in there for sleep. Aggravated, he ripped off his shirt and threw it away somewhere off to the side. Then he lay on his back, on her bed, and his eyes closed on their own.

Nearly asleep herself, she turned on her side and nuzzled into the crook of his arm, throwing a lax leg across his body and resting the palm of her hand on his chest.

--

Spike woke up. He knew right away and without a shred of doubt that he was going to vomit. It was not a question of if, it was a question of when.

He didn't even remember what part of the ship he was in. The ceiling didn't really look familiar.

It took him a minute to become aware of exactly where he was, but his realizations went in this order: All parts of Spike intact? Check. Pants? Check. Shirt?

Shirt?

Shirt tardy. Make a note.

But wait, there was _something _on his chest. A hand. Quite possibly someone else's hand.

He looked down.

Yes, that would be someone else's hand. And someone else's leg thrown over him, too. And someone else's head on his shoulder.

One look down at the purple hair yellow shorts and it didn't take him long to figure out whose.

With the kind of slowness used by someone expecting a land mine, his gaze moved to her face. It was Faye all right. Her eyes were closed in deep sleep but her mouth was slightly open. So was her top. The button was undone. She was lying on her side with half of her limbs draped over him, and her body was pressed up against him. He slowly became aware that the warm pressure on the side of his ribcage was the warm pressure of her breasts.

Gingerly he took her flacid arm and moved it off of him. He slipped out from under her legand managed to climb over her and off of the bed one inch at a time, careful not to wake her up. This was a point in time in which he was afraid he'd have absolutely nothing to say. She made a little sound like a moan in her sleep when he moved away and she flopped carelessly onto her back.

He stood up straight and looked down at her. He tried avoiding it, but he couldn't _not _look – there were her breasts, liberated from the little yellow top, resting peacefully on her tiny frame, having slid slightly outward to her sides.(All of a sudden the thought that they had been in contact with his bare skin only moments ago preyed at his mind.) The dark straps of her suspenders, undone and haphazardly bunched on her tummy, contrasted strongly with her creamy white skin. Her shorts were still on, but the opening at the front gaped, exposing the skin very low on her belly.

For a minute Spike was transfixed. No force on the planet could have moved him. He kept thinking: Maybe I could lie back down…

But a wave of nausea interrupted his thoughts, and before he knew it he was running out the door and down the hall to the toilet. After a few minutes of emptying out his stomach, all the traces of arousal were completely gone from his system too.

--

Faye's first thought, like Spike's, was that she was going to throw up, only she had nothing to distract her and keep her from running down the hall to the toilet as soon as she had thrown a robe around herself. She couldn't say how long she crouched there in the bathroom, emptying all her offerings at the altar of the porcelain god, but eventually she made her way back to her room again, determined to go back to sleep and not wake up until the middle of the afternoon - although _never _was also an option. And then she noticed Spike's shirt on the floor.

She stared at it. _Shit. Shit. Shit. _She tried to remember what had happened, but it was all a haze. Something about the Bebop having a wild ride, something about a lap dance. Quite possibly a polka had been involved. Something about Spike.

What had they done? Had they done anything? _How drunk do you have to be to... how drunk were we?..._

Shit, she was too tired to deal with this. Faye threw herself on the bed and went back to sleep.

--

She woke up in the afternoon as planned, grateful to be alone. The room had an ungodly brightness to it.

She sat up carefully, trying not to jostle her stomach or her brain, which seemed to be sloshing around inside her skull. "I _hate _tequila," she said to herself.

Carefully, carefully, she rose to her feet. Now that soberness had taken over again the room made so much more sense. It was dim, stinky and dirty. Spike's shirt was still splayed out on the floor. Her stomach turned over. She once again tried to remember what had happened, but all she could recall were tiny snatches of scenes that didn't make any sense. However she did remember the feeling of Spike's naked chest under her hand, and this made her want to retch again.

_What did we do? What did we _do? _Did we use protection? Shit!_

She would have given all of her life savings to never have come in contact with tequila at all. Not that she had any savings, just a lot of debts. She would have _doubled _her debts if last night could just have not happened. Her mouth had the taste of melted plastic and sewage, her head ached like it was cleaving, and her entire body felt like scum on the underside of a faucet. Sticky. Stinky. Bad.

She was thristy. She threw a clean shirt on, lurched her body around and wandered into the kitchen to get a sip of water, and there she discovered Jet.

He was standing very still, looking straight at her, and the vein in his forehead gave her the feeling that nothing good was going to be said.

"What… in the hell… _happened?_" he demanded, through gritted teeth.

"Hmm?"

"Do you know how long it took me to find this ship? DO YOU?"

"Don't talk so loud," she mumbled. She couldn't find a glass, so she ducked her head into the sink and drank straight from the faucet.

"Aren't you going to tell me anything?" he demanded through gritted teeth.

"We… uh… we made a run for it," she lied, having come up for air. "Thugs were trying to steal the ship."

He stared at her evenly. He obviously wasn't buying it.

"Spike!" he yelled. Faye had an instinct to run and hide, but her pride kept her in place, along with the grossness she needed to wash out of her mouth. Soon enough Spike was in the kitchen also, looking as bad as she felt.

"Yo," he said drowsily.

"Spike! What in the hell did you guys do last night?" Jet seethed.

_Funny, I was just asking myself the same thing..._

"I try to come home this morning and I can't even find my own goddamn ship! I had to call the police and have them track it down! Did you know that you're _fifty miles from TJ?_"

"Nope," Spike said.

Jet looked ready for murder. "_What happened here?"_

Spike and Faye didn't even glance at each other. Spike shrugged. "I don't know, ask Ed."

Faye shot a glance at him. That wasn't fair!

"She broke into my liquor stash," Spike said. "I left it out by accident."

"We left it out," Faye mumbled.

"Um… right. Yeah. Accident." He stretched and yawned, pretending to be oblivious to Jet's glare. "Do we have any painkillers?" he asked.

Jet staggered into the living room, livid. He sat down on the chair slowly. He pulled a stocking off of the back of the chair and threw it aside with disgust. "Both of you," he said. "Get off my ship."

"Hey, we said it was an accident…"

"OUT! NOW!"

--

They were sitting in the shade underneath the ship, smoking. Jet didn't seem to care as long as they were somewhere where he couldn't see them. Both were wearing very dark shades.

"Um, Spike?" Faye said softly, breaking the silence.

He grunted.

"Do you remember anything from last night?"

He looked down at her without moving his head, his gaze hidden by the sunglasses. She definitely wasn't looking anywhere near him. It was hard to tell with his sunglasses on, but he thought she might be blushing.

"Not a whole lot," he confessed. Of course he remembered a _lot _from the morning. There were certain images from that morning that he wouldn't forget, and he would keep remembering them whether or not he wanted to, probably any time he was by himself or in the shower, but he wasn't about to tell her this.

She was not relieved. "You don't think we… um... did anything, do you?"

"I think we did a lot of things."

"No, I mean did we do anything... together." The flush now covered her entire body.

"I think I would remember that," he said with certainty. "Anyways, I… you know…woke up with my pants on," he added, feeling a weird heat rise to his face. It was strange, talking with her like this.

"Right. Of course we didn't. I would never… with you," she commented coldly, the relief obvious in her voice.

"Likewise, I'm sure," he said.

A minute of silence passed. "So… um," she said. "Do you… by any chance… remember who won?"

It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about. "No clue," he answered finally.

"I can't even remember what the stakes were," she said.

"Me neither."

"And I _never _forget what the stakes are."

"Yeah."

Silence again.

"Rematch?" he said.

--

--

--

--

--

Author's Note.

I think it helps to be just a leeeeetle bit drunk when you write something like this. Well, okay, it might not. But better to be on the safe side, eh?

Take off my shoe.

-Waltraute


End file.
